What do the seven musketeers and the four dwarves have in common? Rhetorical question. No need to answer.

Seriously, we tend to create groups of people, things, and ideas, and the number of elements in the group plays a rule in how we react to the group. The Three Musketeers is the tale that d’Artagnan tells about meeting Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, “the three inseparables.” The Musketeers of legend, then, start as three plus one until they become four, organically.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves are similarly ambiguous: seven plus one, which “is a kind of eight, without being exactly eight.” If we thought of them as eight, rather than seven plus one, their tale would be perverted, immoral, and dirty. Against the law.

Over the years and decades, these specific groupings have made a deep impression in our brains. It’s quite likely that our brains “wanted to be impressed.” Numerical organization makes brains happy. And our brains shall henceforth rebel against seven musketeers and four dwarves. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Eleven Commandments? No, no, no.

The Thirteen Apostles? No, no, no!

The Hundred and Four Dalmatians? Nooooooooooo!

The Five Cardinal Points? You’re making me dizzy.

But this is only an introduction to the real subject of this blog post. I’ve been very busy with projects, deadlines, tasks, obligations, happenings, duties, pleasures, also tasks and deadlines, plus a whole bunch of projects. Paperwork, admin, correspondence. Shopping, cooking, cleaning. Friendly duties urgently performed for loving friends. Have I mentioned tasks and deadlines?

Thankfully, I have Seven Strategies for S-Dissipating Stress. (I couldn’t find a synonym for “dissipating” starting with “s,” except maybe “squandering.”) Be warned: my strategies work!

1. The worst-case scenario. Most of the time, most of us are pretty much safe from war, plague, earthquakes, and really terrible deadly situations. When it comes to the stresses of daily life and our too-many tasks and obligations, it’s useful to imagine “the worst-case scenario.” I won’t finish the project on time. Or I’ll never finish the project. Or I’ll give up on the project. But I’ll come out of it alive and well. It’s very, very, very reassuring to know that in most situations you’ll come out alive and well.

2. Evacuate. This means, create a space (or void or vacuum, e-vacu-ate) inside yourself, by “getting rid of stuff,”mostly those spiky psychic objects called emotions. You can make lists of the tarantulas eating you up inside and “see them on paper” rather than “feel them in your brain.” The brain becomes clearer when you put stuff down in writing. Or put it down “in speaking.” Talk to people, be they amateurs (spouses, mothers-in-law, passers-by) or professionals (psychotherapists, lawyers, hit men). This too can clear the mind and cause your stress to go either up or down, depending.

3. Rhythm is everything. The late Yogi Berra was a baseball player with a stellar career and the reputation for saying wonderfully paradoxical, Zen-like statements that probably came out of his mouth very different from how they were cooked in his mind. Here’s a famous thing that Yogi Berra definitely never said: “Balls fly like time.”

4. Lower your standards. Rumor has it that a perfect omelet was served to Mademoiselle Angélique Dupont at lunchtime on October 17, 1952, at a now-defunct bistrot in Dijon. The one perfect thing in the whole of history! (And it’s only a rumor.) Approximation, compromise, and an acceptable so-so result for various tasks of yours are all much better than the frantic search for something that doesn’t exist, the bugaboo called perfection. For instance, let your blog post be incoherent! In the worst-case scenario, you’ll lose all your subscribers!

5. Be human, to the extent that you can. Here’s the thing about perfection: To be perfect means to have all qualities, otherwise you’re “incomplete, therefore imperfect.” That means that to be perfect means to be lazy, sloppy, inattentive, repetitive, inattentive, repetitive, sloppy, and lazy SOME OF THE TIME. Using CAPITALS in writing is often considered rude, like you’re shouting. And NO HUMAN BEING EVER SHOUTS! PEDRO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!

6. Forgive yourself, then give yourself a medal.

7. Work extremely hard non-stop. Don’t take breaks or naps. Get no assistance from anyone, ever. Don’t read the instruction manual and don’t watch helpful videos on YouTube. Do the work of three people all by yourself. Age as fast as you can, and die young. Rumor has it that death solves many problems. As Yogi Berra didn’t say, “Dead men don’t sweat.”